Affordable housing in area gets a boost

By Jordan Carleo-Evangelist

Published 9:39 pm, Friday, December 20, 2013

Albany

Habitat for Humanity's wholesale reconstruction of Albany's Sheridan Hollow neighborhood will get $3.6 million of the $23 million in affordable housing money handed out Friday by state housing officials.

The award was part of $10.5 million in total awarded to three local projects by New York State Homes and Community Renewal.

The Albany funding will go to Syracuse-based Housing Visions, which is building the rental component of the Sheridan Hollow project — 57 units in 17 buildings.

Construction on those apartments will begin this spring and is expected to take 14 to 16 months, said Ben Lockwood, the nonprofit's director of development.

Lockwood said some of the money will take the form of tax credits Housing Visions can sell to secure financing for the project, while some of it will take the form of a loan from the state housing trust fund.

"We're really excited," he said. "It's going to make for a nice Christmas."

Capital District Habitat for Humanity, the main developer on the Sheridan Hollow project, has already begun construction on the first phase of what will be 60 new one- and two-family homes in partnership with the Touhey Homeownership Foundation.

The first 20 homes are expected to be finished by the end of next year, said Habitat Executive Director Mike Jacobson.

The project, which includes two mixed-use buildings that will house a restaurant and Habitat's corporate offices, is Habitat's most ambitious ever in the Albany area.

It will effectively rebuild a large swath of Sheridan Hollow, which is sandwiched between Arbor Hill and downtown and has become one of the city's most blighted neighborhoods.

Two other local projects also received large awards: $3.4 million to the Cohoes-Lion Heart Residences, 72 new apartments for residents of low-income or with developmental disabilities, and $3.5 million for 100 middle-income units in the Woodrow Townhomes project in Amsterdam.